I’ve never been shy about my experiences with plant medicines — the hallucinogenic kind. Under the right conditions, with the right guidance, I’m a genuine advocate.
But something happened recently that may have quietly shifted how I see the work.
When the Ceremony Didn’t Happen — And Something Better Did
I was supposed to be in ceremony. Our facilitator got sick and it didn’t happen. But what unfolded in its place was one of the most unexpectedly beautiful healing experiences I’ve ever witnessed.
The people I was with have worked with this medicine for nearly a decade. They’ve done extraordinary amounts of deep inner work — and they’ve also been through something painful together.
A previous facilitator had brought this group into being, then slowly, through her own unresolved wounds, began to divide them. A closely knit circle fractured. Connections that felt potentially irreparable. It took years — and a new facilitator, one who trusts the medicine and stays out of the way of each person’s journey — for them to find their way back to each other.
On this particular weekend, no ceremony took place. No one consumed anything. The plant medicine sat quietly in the background — present, but uninvoked.
What Community Healing Actually Looks Like
What happened instead was a deep sharing. A coming to peace with the hurt that had been created. Some people had already moved through their grief and frustration. Others were still in it. We sat in circles inside and outside on a spacious farm, taking in the elements. People shared. Everyone listened. We walked and processed. We sat in nature and turned inward for clarity.
I am new to this group. And what I witnessed was community healing in its most organic form — healing held by the group itself, with no external catalyst required.
I’ve always leaned toward individual inner work as the path to healing the collective — the idea that when one person does their deep work, it ripples outward. This weekend introduced me to the reverse: community as the container for individual healing. The group field holding each person’s process.
It was honestly one of the most beautiful weekends I can remember. And no medicine had to be consumed — though I will say, some would argue that simply being in the energetic field of the plant is enough for it to have an effect.
I agree.
The Threads We Carry
This experience has me thinking about the threads we carry — the ones we bring to each other, the shared experiences, the shared humanity. What if we could find those threads within ourselves and use them to help the people around us?
The intersection of community healing and inner work — the way one can hold and amplify the other — feels like something worth exploring more deeply. It’s a question that doesn’t resolve easily, but one I find myself returning to.
And as it turns out, that question is exactly what brought my friends Bert and Courtney to me about a year ago.
Introducing Inner Threads
They had a vision: an online, spiritually grounded community — one that could offer something real to anyone looking for support and connection on their path. We had meeting after meeting, our conversations growing deeper and more hilarious in equal measure.
“What if we started with a podcast?” Courtney offered one day.
And from that, Inner Threads was born.
Every other week, the three of us gather to explore a topic — sharing personal insights and offering perspectives we hope will resonate wherever you are on your own journey of inner work and healing.
Our first episode is live. And as we mention in the recording, we actually recorded several episodes before realizing we needed to lead with this one: simply acknowledging pain and suffering. It’s real. We all feel it. And it deserves to be the place we start.
You can find us on the Inner Threads website and on YouTube, with all major podcast platforms available as well.
I’d love to know what you think.
